The Poem

On a wooden bench, the little girl was playing with her cat.
“There is this thing dear.” The little boy said.
“Not the love thing again.” The girl said and the cat smirked.
“There is a poem I wrote. It begins..”
“Don’t.” She said.
Ignoring the cat, he went on “When I am standing in my backyard at night, thinking of you, the stars fall down from the skies and talk to me” He finished.
“That didn’t even rhyme.” The girl said. The cat laughed again.
“That wasn’t the poem. You said you didn’t want the poem. It’s true. The stars come down.”

The girl went silent. The cat went silent. There was a man on the other side of the bench with yellow cooling glasses, his eyebrows dyed yellow, his hair dyed yellow. That guy went silent.
“Are you insane. “ She asked calmly. “Are you insane!” Not so calm. “Are you!“
“No dear. They do come down.”
“Hot balls of gas don’t travel millions of years light years in a day. Even if they were to get here, the seas would vaporize, the soil would melt, the atmosphere would detach from the lithosphere. It would not just end civilization, it would change the orientation of the solar system. ” The girl said and the cat nodded.
“Oh and by the way what do your stars look like?” She asked filling with contempt.
He looked at the ground. She was waiting.
“They have pointy ends.” He said. There was roaring laughter. It was the yellow weird guy at the other end of the bench, who immediately realized it was inappropriate and went back to minding his own business. Probably preparing an elaborate plan to rape all old women above the age of sixty five.
She left saying what she always said while leaving.
“The state of consciousness that occupies you over and over again, however feeble the grip, is an active residue of your years of gender isolation when you sought refuge in the comforts of imagined female companionship. I am not your love because love does not exist.” She took a philosophical pause and delivered the last blow in her usual clinical voice.
“What exists is your weakness masquerading as an uncontrollable desire”
The boy went home, slammed the door to his room and waited. When it was night, he went to his backyard and thought of her. He didn’t think of her like today when she had acted like a cunt. He thought of the day when he had been waiting outside Miss Molly’s office after having received the usual heavy spanking. It had been the first time he saw the girl. She had been moving around the office, confused, lost, looking for someone. He knew it wasn’t proper for a man to cry, so he would have to exercise an extraordinary measure of muscular control if the girl suddenly decided to talk to him. She had begun by asking him directions to the the principal’s office. Keeping his face clear of all expressions, he had pointed with the forefinger of his right hand in the direction of the office she had been looking for. Surprisingly, she didn’t move but kept looking into his eyes. She had seen something. She sat down beside him and waited. Without being prompted, he spoke intermittently about how unfair and cruel life was, especially Miss Molly. She listened to him answer questions she hadn’t asked, heard him psychoanalyse people she didn’t know. She even held his hand while he kept talking as if they had known each other their entire lives. She didn’t want to go. But he insisted. She didn’t want to go. He almost turned red with anger
“You can go. I am fine. Miss. Seriously. It isn’t as bad as you think.”
Now standing in his backyard he thought of how a few minutes after she had left, he had limped all his way home from school, not cursing Miss Molly because he was too preoccupied with his little imaginings about the little girl. And then without any warning, the sky descended and covered his backyard and the stars arrived and surrounded him. He didn’t have the time to be enchanted. He just broke the sparkling tip of the nearest star and walked to the street where the girl lived in her large house. He threw the tip at the window. It broke through the glass and killed the cat. The girl saw the cat nailed to the wall and the blunt end of the star protruding through its chest. She saw him waiting outside.
“I don’t know if love exists. Or if it’s all hormonal or whatever. But I know this. Whenever I think of you standing in my backyard the stars fall down from the skies and come and talk to me.”
Then he left making craters in the pavement with every step he took.